The Lemon Tree

There’s a lemon tree in the yard that still remembers her.

It leans a little now, as if listening for something. . . wind, footsteps, her laugh. Every spring it blooms too soon, and every spring I tell myself I’ll cut it back. But then the blossoms open, stubbornly fragrant, and I just can’t. The smell drifts through the open kitchen window, and for a few seconds I’m there again, barefoot in the dirt with her hair brushing my arm, pretending we know what love costs.

We planted it together. She said the first fruit would take years, but that didn’t matter; she liked the idea of something that would outlast us. She pressed the soil around the roots with her hands, and when she stood up, her fingers smelled of earth and citrus. I kissed her then, dirt and sunlight on her skin. The neighbor’s sprinklers came on mid-kiss, and she laughed into my mouth.

I still remember the exact sound.

She lived across town, near the coast. We weren’t supposed to be anything serious - just two people orbiting the same stretch of time, a little too curious, a little too lonely. We met at a coffee shop after work, then again a week later, pretending it was an accident. Soon I was leaving the porch light on for her even when I knew she wasn’t coming.

That summer was hot, the kind that makes your clothes stick to your skin. We’d sit on the back steps after dinner with the radio playing a little too quietly to recognize the song, a single bulb over the door flickering. She’d talk about the places she wanted to live: Lisbon, Vancouver, anywhere with a sea. . . and I’d nod, pretending I might follow. She liked to peel lemons while we talked, leaving the spirals of rind in a little pile between us. The air smelled alive and slightly bitter.

I remember the way she held a glass, two hands, always, even when it wasn’t cold. The way she looked at me when I wasn’t paying attention, as if memorizing something she knew she’d have to forget. The way she’d trace her thumb over the scar on my wrist and ask the story again, though she already knew it. We didn’t talk about love out loud.

Some things lose their charge when named.

When she left, it was quiet. No fight, no storm, just the calm after a long season of pretending it could last. She said she’d write, and she did, once: a postcard from a train station somewhere in Italy. The ink had bled through the paper from humidity. I could barely read it. It ended with:

Take care of the lemon tree for me.

I kept that card tucked inside a book for years. I used to reread it when the world felt too loud, just to remind myself of a different time, a calmer one. When I married someone else, someone kind, steady, beautiful in a way that didn’t hurt, I finally threw it away. But sometimes, when I touch the tree, I swear I still feel the indent of her handwriting in the bark.

The tree bore fruit the year my son was born. I remember stepping outside one morning, the yard still wet with dew, and seeing a single yellow orb hanging there, perfect and impossible. I picked it and cut it open right there in the garden. The smell hit me like a flash — bright, sharp, the scent of every moment I’d tried to store away. I could almost hear her humming.

Now, a decade later, I stand at the same window most mornings with coffee in hand and the ache of something unnameable just behind my ribs. My wife moves around the kitchen, half-asleep, the dog circles his bowl, my son asks where the milk is. Life is good, and it moves forward the way a tide does: patient, steady, uninterested in the footprints it erases.

But sometimes the breeze shifts, carrying that faint lemon scent through the window, and I’m back on those steps, watching her tuck her hair behind her ear, listening to her talk about faraway cities.

The dog noses at the base of the tree now, searching for fallen fruit. The branches are heavy with green lemons that will ripen by the end of summer. I tell myself I should prune it soon, keep it from leaning too close to the fence.

I don’t.

Instead, I press my hand to the trunk and let the bark push faintly into my palm. The warmth there feels almost like a pulse. The leaves tremble overhead, just wind - I know, but for a moment, it sounds like her voice, low and laughing, carried across all the years I thought I’d outgrown.

The smell of lemon lingers on my skin long after I’ve gone inside.

I try washing it off, but it always stays.

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